


Five times Tom sleep walked and the one time he didn't have to

by MarbleAide



Category: Actor RPF, Marvel Avengers Movies RPF
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Gen, M/M, Sleepwalking, just a lot of cuteness I think, there is some angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-11
Updated: 2013-01-11
Packaged: 2017-11-25 02:27:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/634138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarbleAide/pseuds/MarbleAide
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tom sleepwalks and, no matter what, always goes to find Chris whereever he might be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five times Tom sleep walked and the one time he didn't have to

**Author's Note:**

> Most of these experiences are based around my own sleepwalking adventures as a child, because I did sleep walk for a few years and was told stories about it by my mother. For whatever reason, when I did sleepwalk, I would always find her, no matter what. So. I hope you enjoy the Hiddlesworth version of that sort of?
> 
> Yeah.

 

**1) The time it rained.**

The first time it happen, Chris groaned into his pillow and tried to ignore everything. If he didn’t move at all, he could go back to sleep and just leave it at that. If he rolled over and looked at the clock, he was sure the time would glare back at him about being five or six in the morning, which would only leave him an hour at most of sleep, which would just turn into him laying in bed glaring at the ceiling until the alarm went off. His best bet was to just keep his eyes closed, totally relaxed, and ignore—

A solid ‘thud’ came from the room connected to his, which made Chris jerk and sit up in bed, turning to look in the direction of the sound. He couldn’t help but glance at the clock as he did so, which only read that it was one thirty-six, which was a blessing in itself, but then again what the hell could Tom be doing up at one in the morning that required so much noise? Another few bumps and bangs admitted from Tom’s hotel room, which gave Chris enough motivation to roll out of bed to inspect what was going on.

He knocked just in case, but no answer ever did come, so Chris took it upon himself to enter. Tom wouldn’t mind; they keep the doors between them unlocked for a reason.

“Tom?” He yawned, attempting to wipe the sleep from his eyes. “Tom, it’s almost two in the morning what the hell are you doing?” He stopped when he found Tom with his back turned standing beside his bed and his luggage sitting at his feet. Around him, his clothing was thrown about the floor, crumbled in little heaps and thrown onto the unmade bed. Chris closed the door silently behind him, staring on with an edge of caution as he watched the other actor grabbing up an article of clothing and messily folding it before throwing it inside his suitcase.

“Tom?” He asked again, confusion written all over his face as he took a step forward. “Are you alright, mate?” No reply came and Tom made no move to acknowledge Chris’s presence, so he quickly closed the distance between them, not sure if he could reach out for the other just yet. Up this close, he could hear the man muttering to himself. Random sentences that had his name and Scarlett, Robert, Joss, and something about the weather.

“Tom…?” His hand came up, not an inch away from Tom’s shoulder to turn him when the man jerked away from his grasp, quickly turning around on his own with a button-up shirt in hand.

The first thing Chris noticed that indicated something was wrong was Tom’s eyes. They were open, but glazed and distant. They were half-lidded and stared vacantly back at Chris. His lips held a pleasant little smile, but his eyes were dark and not as bright as they usual were. Chris almost took a step back. Almost.

“Oh! Chris, good! I was just looking for you!” Tom clapped his hands before grabbing Chris’s arm, jerking him forward a few feet before letting go and turning to his messy packing. “I was afraid it would have leaked and gotten you soaked and—“

“Tom.” Chris cut him off, forcing him to let go of the pair of jeans he held and moved him over to the bed, pushing against his shoulders until he finally gave in and sat down. “What are you talking about?”

There was a moment of pause between the question and Tom’s response. A moment where Tom simply stared up at Chris dreamy-eyed looking just as confused as the other. It took a second for him to snap out of it, blinking and laughing softly to himself. “The roof—it’s. It’s raining, so we need to leave. The roof is leaking. We need a new roof. We need to leave. I was looking for you. Find you. Have to find you to leave. I don’t want you getting wet.”

Oh.

_Oh._

It clicked and Chris blinked, realizing what was going on. Slowly, softly, still taking a little bit of caution, he took Tom’s hand in his own; squeezing it gently just to make sure Tom knew that he was there.

“Don’t worry. My roof isn’t leaking. You can sleep with me tonight, alright?”

There was an edge of resistance as Chris pulled Tom to his feet, the man reluctantly following along behind him. Chris looked over his shoulder at the other, seeing his face blank and eyes shifting back and forth rapidly, still not focusing on anything, just calculating. 

“We won’t get wet.” Chris reassured him, which seemed to get Tom’s attention. “Promise.”

This seemed to put Tom’s mind at ease as he held Chris’s hand a little harder and followed over into the other room faster behind him.

Chris made sure Tom was safely tucked under the sheets asleep once more before he could close his eyes and follow suit. Even so, he noticed how Tom’s hand still held on gently to his wrist as if needing to make sure he would stay there beside him. He did, of course, until the sun came up through the curtains and Tom didn’t remember anything from what happened that night.

**2) The time he searched.**

It was a different hotel this time, one where Chris and Tom were not in connecting rooms (something Chris would insist on next time). Mark woke up in the middle of the night from a knock on his door. He cursed, throwing a pillow over his head and tried to ignore it. It was too late for anyone to be knocking on his damned door.

The sound, however, persisted and eventually turned into something that Mark could only describe as scratching. He groaned again, cursed, and finally threw the covers off himself to answer it. He didn’t want to recognize the fact that the clock read just past three in the morning.

He was halfway to the door when he heard another knock and paused, realizing suddenly that the sounds were not coming from the door that lead out to the hallway, but the one attached to Tom’s room. Mark simply glared at the door for a moment, standing in the dark hotel room in nothing but boxer shorts wondering what the actual _fuck_ Tom was doing up at this hour. That, and how to explain to everyone else in the morning why he felt the intense need to punch out Tom Hiddleston in the middle of the night.

His eyes watched as the door handle to the door jiggled, not budging as the door was, of course, locked. It took him a another few minutes of just watching and listening, noting how as time passed the knocking and scratching got a little more desperate, until Mark finally gave in and walked over to the door.

“Okay, Tom. What the hell do you even think—“ A line of swear words and insults were ready to roll off his tongue as he quickly unlocked the door and threw it open, but as soon as his vision focused enough to make Tom out in the dark, he stopped them from coming. “What…Tom, are you sleepwalking?”

Tom didn’t respond, simply stared blankly at Mark for a second before frowning, brow coming together in worry.

“Chris?”

He moved pasted Mark into the hotel room, walking around slowly, but with a purpose as he moved around everything sitting on tables, threw pillows onto the ground, and searched through dresser drawers all the while calling out Chris’s name.

Mark watched for a moment, silently standing by while Tom slowly tore apart his hotel room looking for Chris under newspapers and sheets. He almost found it amusing, if it wasn’t the middle of the night, but right now all Mark wanted to do was get rid of him and go back to bed.

With a heavy sigh and a hand scrubbed threw his hair, Mark stepped over to Tom, touching his arm lightly to get his attention. For a second, the Brit looked startled, staring blank and wide-eyed back at Mark. “Come on,” He said quietly, making Tom blink in interest. “I know where Chris is.”

Tom went without protest after that. Mark took his arm gently, leading him out of his room and down the hall, two doors. The short walk was slow with tired steps and steering Tom away from walls. He listened halfheartedly as Tom muttered quietly to himself, using Chris’s name frequently as he spoke of something with breakfast and bubbles. He didn’t pay much attention, knocking against Chris’s door loudly enough to stir the other man.

It took another three knocks, each louder than the last, to finally wake Chris from his slumber. His hair was tuffed together and frazzled as he answered, grounding the heel of his hand into his eyes against the harsh light of the hotel hallway.

“Mark? What are…Tom?” He yawned, blinking wearily between his co-stars.

“He’s sleepwalking.” Mark replied, pushing gently at Tom to get in front of Chris and out of his hands. “He asked for you.”

Chris looked at Mark for a second, blinking away sleep and trying to think as Tom finally seemed to grasp that the man he was looking for was now right in front of him, quickly giving a wide smile and clinging to Chris’s arm. “Right.” He finally said, nodding though he was too tired right now to understand why. “Thanks. Yeah…thanks.” He nodded again and barely caught it as Mark said goodnight, shuffling back off to his own room.

Chris slowly eased Tom from around his arm, pressing a hand into his lower back and gently moved him to follow into his own room. Tom kept mumbling about how he thought Chris was gone, how he looked and how they still needed to go buy the bubbles for breakfast.

“In the morning.” Chris said with a small smile which seemed to satisfy Tom. They settled together in Chris’s bed sharing a pillow, falling back asleep within seconds of one another.

**3) The time he got lost.**

This time around, Jeremy found him.

He’d woken up early to go for a run—to just stretch out his legs and get his heartbeat racing. It also gave him a good excuse to take an afternoon nape seeing as he was up before the sun. He had changed quickly and stepped out into the brightly-light hall only to freeze a moment later with his hand still on the doorknob.

“Tom?”

Sitting across the hall in front of his hotel room door sat Tom, legs curled up to his chest and his shoulders hunched over, head shoved into his knees and all Jeremy could really see was he was shaking. Tom was only dressed in his pajama pants and every time it seemed like he took a breath in his entire frame shuttered with it.

“Tom?” Jeremy asked again, still too confused to do little more but stand there. “Are you…alright?”

He paused long enough to hear the sob in reply and quickly jumped to realize that no, _no, he was not alright, shit._

There was no rhyme or reason for Tom to be sitting outside his hotel room crying. Of course, it was fairly logical for him to somehow have locked himself outside in the middle of the night, but at the same time he was smart enough to simply go downstairs to the reception desk to get another key, not sit in the hall for who knows how long and start weeping about it.

As soon as he knelt down to figure out what the hell was going on, Jeremy realized something was a bit more wrong then just locking himself out. Tom’s eyes weren’t focused at all, his lids half closed as he stared lazily down at the carpeted floor, not even noticing Jeremy right in front of him.

“To—“

“I couldn’t…couldn’t…find…him.” Tom said, hiccupping in between words as his shoulders jolted with the violent movement, cheeks wet as tears simply seemed to trail downward in globs. “I don’t…he’s gone. He wouldn’t…” He sniffled, hiccupped once more before his head jerked upward so suddenly that Jeremy snapped back in surprise, landing hard on his heels and wondering what the fuck was going on. “He wouldn’t just leave, would he?”

The question was said with such broken loss that, for a few breathes, Jeremy didn’t know what to do with it. It was the voice that got to him, because Tom’s eyes were blank and tired and dead, but his voice was something different. It cracked and shook in a way that Jeremy just couldn’t remember hearing ever before. Not from Tom, at least.

“Who—“ He had to swallow to contain his voice, clearing his throat once before speaking again. “Who wouldn’t leave?”

“Chris.” Tom said, sounding even more upset if that was possible. “I’ve—I’ve gotten lost and I don’t know where he’s gone.”

That’s the moment when it hit for Jeremy. The panic died down a little bit in his chest. He almost woke him up then, thinking it might ease Tom’s mind just a bit to be awake and probably not remember any of this, but then again it was probably a better idea to just get him back to bed. Or better yet, where Chris would be.

Jeremy smiled just a little bit, taking Tom’s arm and helped him up to his feet. “Okay, don’t worry. I’ll help you find him, alright?” He had too many younger siblings to not know how to deal with this.

Tom moved easily with him, the crying having finally stopped as Tom sniffled his last tear away. He nodded slowly, following Jeremy’s lead down the hall

“He ran too fast through the forest…” Tom mumbled as they went down the hall, voice soft so Jeremy only heard half the words. “I wasn’t able to catch up…

Chris was at the door with only the second knock, having gotten up moments before to begin his day with a shower. He was only in the hotel bathrobe when he threw the door open with surprise that quickly died down as soon as he saw Tom.

“Again?” Was the only thing Chris asked to which Jeremy gave him a strange look right before he handed Tom over to him.

“This happen often?”

Chris simply shrugged, not minding at all as Tom leaned against him, head resting on his shoulder as he murmured words, appearing to be slowly going back to sleep.

“More often than you’d think.”

There’s a pause in the air before Jeremy just nodded and muttered a quick ‘good to know’ under his breath before turning to leave.

Chris closed the door soon after that, stirring Tom towards his bed to tuck him away for however many more hours he might sleep. He took quick note of how puffy Tom’s eyes seemed, but tried not to think about it and got right back to his shower.

**4) The time he disappeared.**

By this time, everyone knew about Tom’s little sleepwalking habit. They didn’t discuss it with him, didn’t even mention it, but it had grown into such an issue that everyone else should probably know, just to make sure no one was thrown off guard.

They were all still surprised by the outcome of what happened next.

Cobbie awoke to a crash and, for a split second, thought it was her daughter. Thinking it over, she realized she was halfway across the world and that couldn’t be the answer at all. So, she fell back asleep without a second thought.

Robert was the one who got the phone call fifteen minutes later, because the receptionist didn’t exactly know who to call and thought Robert Downey Jr. would be the best bet; would know what to do.

“Hmmm?”

“I’m sorry to wake you, Sir.”

“Hm.”

“I know it’s late, but—“

“Mhmmm.”

“—it’s Mr. Hiddleston, sir. I didn’t know…he was just down here and…appeared to be, ah, sleeping? But he also just…”

“Hm?”

“…well, left, sir. Out the door.”

“Mmfffuck. “

Robert hung up quickly after that, stumbling out of bed to pull his pants on and get to Chris’s room as soon as possible.

Cobie and Scarlett woke up with all the banging, soon joining Robert and Chris as they threw clothes on and ran down the stairs to the lobby, too awake and worried to care about waiting for an elevator. Tom was nowhere to be seen in the lobby when they got down there and, upon asking, the young woman at the desk just shrugged and said that he had left, saying something about ‘meeting Chris at the pub’.

They split up running in opposite directions after that, with Cobie and Robert heading down one street and Chris with Scarlett going down in the other direction. The streets were quiet, it being in the late hours of the night, but not quiet enough that a random person sleepwalking around wouldn’t get injured.

Chris could hear the sound of squealing tires in his head, the color of blood mixed with gravel, of him not being able to wake Tom up this time around. It made his stomach drop and his heart constrict in his chest, running faster down the street, calling out Tom’s name even though he wasn’t sure there would come any sort of reply.

Time past, but there was no telling how long it was. Chris just kept running, his eyes searching, his voice hoarse from calling out Tom’s name. He kept exchanging looks at Scarlett, trying his hardest to keep the image of broken bones and blood out of his head.

“Tom!”

Frantic.

“Tom!”

His pulse beat too loud in his ears; his head.

“TOM!”

Panic.

The sound of a horn, someone cursed loud into the night air, and Chris’s head jerked towards the sounds, catching the sight of a man stumbling around in the streets. His throat closed.

**“T-OM!”**

Chris moved, darting into the street. Scarlett was three steps behind him and not fast enough. The power behind the crash into each other almost sent them both toppling to the ground, but Chris managed to keep them both on their feet, dragging Tom back over to the sidewalk and out of the street.

He was so worried, standing on the sidewalk in the middle of the night, hugging this man close and not letting him go, that Chris didn’t even notice Tom waking up. The force of suddenly having Chris crash into him jolted Tom awake. It took a second for his body to realize what was going on, but then it went into panic mode, tensing and struggling as he had no idea where he was. Chris didn’t care, it seemed, and just held him tighter, burying his face into Tom’s neck, trying to stop the panic that still held his chest in a vice grip.

“Chri—“

“Don’t.” Chris choked, finding it difficult to breathe. “Don’t do that to me. Ever again.”

Even though Tom still didn’t understand what was going on, he placed his arms around Chris’s back gently and promised himself to never do this again if it meant seeing Chris this way.

**5) The time he spoke.**

“I…I don’t get it.”

Tom sat at the edge of Chris’s bed, his hands held out before him, wrists against his knees as he stared down at either them or the carpet, Chris really couldn’t tell which. He’d woken up a few minutes ago to Tom just sitting there. This was the first time he’s spoken since then, which concerned Chris. Now, all he could hear was the thickness of Tom’s voice. It weighed too much and hung in the air.

Chris licked his lips. “Get what, Tom?”

“They just…they just left. They gave up.”

He swallowed, not liking where this was going at all. “Who?”

“They.” Tom said, sharper, and moved for the first time since he’d gotten into Chris’s room and sat down. His head turned back so he was looking at Chris. His eyes were open, but so empty and dead. Dark, not as blue as they should be, even in the shadows of the night, and Chris didn’t like that at all. They just looked so…lost. “They could have just—they could have tried harder!”

“To—“

“They loved each other!” Tom snapped, bite right back, and for just a second there was nothing but anger before the empty sadness over took him once more. “Right?”

Chris didn’t know what to say.

“I mean—they had to. At one point? They wouldn’t have…have gotten married. Otherwise. Right?”

Oh.

Chris suddenly understood it. Or rather, he thought he did.

“Look…Tom—“

“No, no, no! They loved each other!” Tom retorted, his hands curling into fists against his knees and his voice cracked. “They did! I just—I just…don’t…get it.”

“Tom.” Chris sat up, reaching out for Tom, trying to comfort his troubled mind.

Tom blinked at Chris, avoiding his hand. “Do you think that will happen to me?”

Chris froze and Tom took that opening to continue, even though Chris was sure he wouldn’t have stopped anyway.

“If—If—If you find someone and you love them. Love them with all your heart. And then they leave. They’re just…they’re gone. And things break. Fall apart. I just don’t GET IT!” He yelled out the ending, cringing and pulling his feet up towards the bed, curling into himself. Chris could hear a sob even if he couldn’t see it. Tom’s voice is soft again when he speaks, but that just makes it worse. “I don’t…I don’t want to be alone. I don’t want to find someone and then have them leave. I want to be happy with someone and know they’ll love me back. Be there with me.”

Chris sighed, feeling dread wash over his body. He can’t understand it, he knows he can’t. But still, he’ll try. “Tom. Please.”

“I just…I don’t want to sleep alone every night.” He cut in, turning his head up and back. Chris hates the desperation he sees. How young and broken he looks, like a child, and for some reason, it seems like Tom’s just given up. “Right?”

At this, Chris is at a loss. He doesn’t know what to say or how to make this better for Tom. Thoughts of true love and romance novels keep popping up into his head, wanting to tell him that everyone can find someone and not every love will end in some sort of sadness, but that all sounds so fake. It’s not what Tom wants to hear, or at least not what Chris thinks he does. So, instead, he just tells him the truth.

“You won’t be alone. Promise.”

**1) The time none of that happened, and Tom simply slept.**

They slept together, close. Not spooning and pressed into each other’s space, heat rising up into zones of discomfort under the heavy hotel comforter, but facing each other, peacefully, with the thought that with waking up they’ll only see one another for a few seconds, the only thing right there, before noticing the rest of the world.

Chris woke up once in the middle of the night, blinking softly and breathing quietly, just to make sure Tom was still next to him, calm and still fast asleep. He moved just a little bit closer to him, brushing a strand of hair from his eyes before settling once more with his eyes closed.

Tom, on the other hand, didn’t wake up. He didn’t stir once as he tangled his feet within sheets and moved to steal half of Chris’s pillow. He just slept all through the night, because Chris was there right by his side. There was no need to search for him; to look or get lost or disappear. Chris was exactly where he should be; right next to Tom.  And Tom was perfectly alright with that.

It’s peace.


End file.
